PSA: Don't Be Like JD Vance And Leave Your Venmo Public

Wired said it uncovered JD Vance's friends list on Venmo. Here's how you can avoid a similar fate.

Would you want your Venmo friends list to be public for all to see?

That was the situation in which Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, found himself this week.

Venmo, owned by PayPal, is a peer-to-peer payment app. In a new report from Wired , the magazine said it uncovered 211 political operatives, tech executives, Yale Law School graduates, people linked to Project 2025 ― a 920-page policy blueprint that would radically restructure the U.S. government ― and others on Vance’s friends list.

Venmo gives each user the ability to control their friends list and see transactions among these connections, or to make them visible only to the user and the recipient. But the default settings on Venmo make these details public.

Wired reported that the names on Vance’s friends list appear to be from his real-life contacts ― highly sensitive information that can pose a security risk if exposed.

Jordan Libowitz, the vice president of communications for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Wired that “the more personal data that is public about someone the more points of pressure or influence there are on that person.”

Having someone on your friends list does not necessarily mean you’ve exchanged money with them. When you sign up for Venmo, it will ask for permission to access the contacts on your phone . If you agree, these will get added to your friends list on the app.

Nonetheless, your Venmo friends list, as well as your transactions, can give strangers embarrassingly revealing details about who you interact with on a regular basis, or who you consider a close contact.

You may not be a politician running for office, but you might still want your Venmo account and list of friends to be private.

How To Adjust Your Privacy Settings On Venmo

To make your Venmo more private, you will want to toggle off the app’s default settings that make your account details visible to strangers.

For Your Friends List

Venmo makes your friends list public by default, and the Wired article might’ve never been written if Vance had simply changed his settings.

Here’s how to avoid a fate like his:

1. Open your Venmo app, go to Settings, select Privacy and then Friends List.
2. Select the “Private” option, so your friends list is visible only to you.
3. Toggle off the setting that reads “Appear in other users’ friends lists,” so your connections are kept more private.

Settings inside Venmo allow you to hide your transactions and friends list from other people.

For Your Transactions

Your transactions ― including payment comments, names of senders and recipients, and payment time stamps ― are public unless you manually choose otherwise.

Venmo wants transactions to be public as part of the platform’s social strategy. “We make it default because it’s fun to share [information] with friends in the social world,” a company representative told CNET in 2018.

But keeping this information public is not smart for campaigning politicians, nor is it smart for anyone who wants to maintain some privacy around their utility bills, donations or therapy sessions.

Here how to make your transactions private:

1. Go to Settings, select Privacy, and then choose the “Private” option.
2. If your accounts details were once public and you want to hide past transactions, select Past Transactions, and then choose “Change All to Private.”

Bonus: A Setting That Makes It Harder For Your Venmo To Get Hacked

Beyond changing your privacy settings, you should also be adding more authentication layers to your account so it becomes harder for a stranger to get in.

1. Go to Settings, and then select Face ID & PIN.
2. Turn on “Enable Face ID & Pin.”

Why You Should Check Your Settings On Every App

This is not the first time that a public official has had their app activity revealed. In 2021, BuzzFeed News (the now-shuttered outlet owned by BuzzFeed, HuffPost’s parent company) found President Joe Biden’s Venmo account in less than 10 minutes.

In fact, this might not even be the only privacy exposure for Vance, as Slate may have found his Spotify profile this week too.

Ultimately, it’s good to always double-check the privacy settings on your accounts, because all too often the default settings make your information public for the entire world to see.